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The Policy ThinkShop Comments on Other Social Media: BIG BROTHER IS LISTENING AND SHARING

BIG DATA is changing the world. Because it is predominantly a high tech, expensive and rapidly changing business endeavor, governments have to collaborate, borrow and share in order to play in the BIG DATA game.

What are the implications for the relationship between government control and individual privacy and freedom? When government morphs into a global player, sharing and collecting on the open market your personal data, what are the implications for protecting your own interests in relations to the interests of corporate giants and world stage political actors who are protecting pursuing their own interests and wants?

“The power of information is in the eyes of the beholder–especially public opinion. What we know and think about what others know is crucial for the future of privacy in our societies and perhaps freedom itself.”

For those of us who have nothing to hide today, the idea that tomorrow’s leaders may be peeping at everything we do that we presume to be private is downright creepy! Indeed, the so called leak scandal in DC today is giving more and more people some pause.

Imagine that we continue to allow the government to peek in on our lives with impunity. Tomorrow, a government program that is partly privatized lands your most personal and private information in the hands of a leaker. But that leaker does not leak to the general public, he or she sells or uses your information for personal gain. The possibilities are no longer hypothetical. It all seems to be unraveling before our very eyes…

“‘WE WANT you to help us do this better,” asserted General Keith Alexander (pictured), the director of America’s National Security Agency (NSA), to hundreds of computer hackers at Black Hat, an annual information-security conference in Las Vegas on July 31st. General Alexander claimed that his agency’s mass-surveillance programmes had stopped 54 potential terrorist plots. He reassured the audience that their privacy was being protected. Still, there were a few heckles.

America’s spies have had a tough time since Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, began leaking information that revealed the massive scale of NSA snooping. Indeed, just as General Alexander tried to charm the geeks, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published another leak by Mr Snowden. This one revealed a system called XKeyscore that lets the NSA glean emails, chats and browsing histories without specific authorisation. The intelligence agency confirmed the programme, but said it was lawful and essential.”

Conflict and competition can be argued are leading forces in the development of civilizations. However, when conflict and competition exist within a system that is competing with a plethora of external sources, these internal forces can be destructive because a divided house is more easily destoyed.

America is such a system today. This is especially true of our divided political system. From Watergate to various false attempts at “Obamagate” today, America finds itself at an important crossroads. Eisenhower’s military industrial complex seems to be reaching Orwellian proportions. It is not just made up of electronic eavesdropping. It has plenty of mortal and brick and significant parts of it are independent, for profit and privatized.

The abuses of Black Water during the Gulf War are now looking temporary and relatively small compared to the all pervasive and apparently institutionalized programs that listen in on private communication among all Americans in a new America where BIG BROTHER seems to be watching, listening, recording and even sending drones.

“INSIDE FORT MEADE, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified …”

Technology is changing war but legal concepts and international law are not as mutable. As governments and leaders enthusiastically move forward with technological efficacy, the legal morass and moral quandary caused by social, psychological and economic destruction promises to create new problems that may haunt us for generations. But technology moves fast, corporate America knows how to package and sell it, and the American public is the last to weigh in. Democracy is increasingly purchased in the ongoing divided American electorate and the internecine warfare election politics now represent. Like the proverbial Pyrrhic victory, we crush and pick off our enemies as the facts of our deeds slowly leek out and we potentially stand in ubiquitous and unforgiving popular judgement at home and abroad.

We seem to be getting farther and farther away from “though shall not kill” and “violence begets violence”

At last we have a technological equivalent to hackers threatening social and economic information exchange where the government is “anonymous” and civilization itself is the victim. It is legion, expect it…

“WHEN it comes to lethal drone strikes against foreign targets, America’s government and Congress should be aware that “what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”, says …”

American demographics and the urban vs. rural, North vs. South, and “White vs. other” dichotomies continue to paralyze an American political system that must transform its ways of raising resources and allocating them in the interests of an increasingly “non-White” society. What does the new America look like? How will it lead? What does the future of a diverse America look like? Does this re-election of an African American president mean that America has turned the “Real Americans vs. the rest” stultifying dichotomous past?

Religiously, the American landscape continues to get decided and the so called “rightwing” media continues to cement the rightwing, mostly White, mostly suburban and rural coalition. The Pew Foundation continues to shed light on these developments as it reports on religious demographics and trends…

“There was considerable speculation during the 2012 primaries about the strength of support for Mitt Romney among white evangelical Protestants. A Pew Research Center analysis of exit poll data finds that white evangelical Protestants voted for Romney with as much enthusiasm as his other supporters did. In addition, white evangelical Protestants voted as heavily for Romney as they did for the GOP candidates in 2008 and 2004, and they made up about the same share of the electorate as they did in the two previous elections.”

The United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch …

IS IT because America and Europe have tired of their own wars that they have started to turn their back on other people’s? The number of dead in Syria has passed 30,000. Some days over 250 bodies are added to the pile, which brings to mind Iraq at the insurgency’s peak in …

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

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